Kokuyo ME Notebook: A Review

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

The Kokuyo ME Notebook is an A5-sized (210 x 148 mm), seventy-page ruled notebook. The cover is made of shiny cardstock with a geometrical pattern and copper/gold tape on the spine.

It is perfect bound, which means that the book block of single pages (rather than sewn signatures) is glued into the casing. With some pressure, you can get the notebook to lie flat.

I couldn't find any information about the kind of paper used in this notebook or its weight. It feels thicker than Tomoe River Paper. It is off-white with 6mm ruled lines in grey. The top of each page is labeled with "Title," and the bottom has a place for the date.

The paper is smooth to the touch, but when I wrote my long writing sample, I noticed a tiny bit of tooth. I wasn't bothered by this at all. In fact, I liked the fact that there was some resistance under my nib.

I tested the paper with ten different fountain pens and inks. Although it handled fine and medium nibs well, there was a tiny bit of bleed through with wetter inks and show through is quite visible.

Swabs cause the paper to buckle. The ink looks good and you can see varying shades and pooling. The paper brings out a little sheen in the inks and some bleed through occurred.

I also tested various pens and pencils. The Sharpie Ultra Fine Point bled through and show through was visible for most of the pens.

The Kokuyo Notebook is lightweight and can get bent with normal use. The binding tape pulls away easily, though the glued spine seems fairly stable.

The paper in the Kokuyo notebook is pleasant to write on, but it does exhibit both bleed through and show through with some inks and nibs. I'm not impressed with the notebook's construction. If it is thrown in a bag with other books, it will get beat up pretty quickly.

This notebook is available at Vanness Pens for $6.75.

(Vanness Pens provided the Kokuyo Notebook free of charge to Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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Kokuyo Campus Business A5 Notebook Review

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

The Kokuyo Campus Business 105BT-DB A5 notebook is easy to miss based on the name alone, but underneath the non-descriptive number/letter name is a fantastic little notebook. There are so many different A5 notebooks to choose from; it's basically one of the most popular notebook sizes available, and for good reason. It's large enough to write comfortably, but small enough to easily transport and carry around. Why choose this notebook over another? Well, like most things, it comes down to personal preference.

To me, one of the big distinguishing factors of this notebook is the cover and binding. it's a flimsy, flexible cover and a blued binding that gives the notebook more of a permanent journal feel over a spiral-bound notebook for school notes. It's still fairly economical, though. At just over $3, it's a great value for the level of quality. The glue binding feels strong, but also pliable enough to allow the notebook to easily stay flat when open.

The cover is a dark blue with white text, but there's also a subtle gray honeycomb pattern all over the cover. I really like this extra visual texture on an otherwise "all business" notebook.

Inside the covers, there's 50 sheets of Kokuyo's lovely 70gsm paper. The paper is lined (30 lines per page), but there are also dots along the lines to provide some guidance for separating things horizontally. The paper has a silky smooth coating that makes most pens glide across the surface, but some pens/inks have trouble getting enough "grip" to make the ink flow freely. In my testing, I've only had issues with a 1.5mm stub nib and the Schmidt P8126 rollerball refill. The rollerball seems to lack the amount of friction required to rotate the microscopic ball that distributes the ink on the page. Once it's moving, it's not bad, but it does take a little scribbling to make it start. Aside from that, I really love using this paper with all manner of writing instruments (provided they agree with the paper coating).

Show-through on the back of the sheet is fairly prominent with fountain pen inks, but not so bad with everything else. This is typical and expected for the paper weight (70gsm) but something you should consider if you mostly use large fountain pen nibs or anything else that lays down a lot of ink compared to a traditional fine fountain pen or gel ink refill.

This notebook is utilitarian on both the outside and inside. There's some normal branding and retail markings on the exterior covers, but the inside covers are bare (aside from a few diagrams with suggestions for using the dots system). No name labels or anything; the notebook just gets right to business with the first page. The pages aren't numbered, but there is a convenient spot in the top outer corner of each page for the date.

The Kokuyo Campus Business A5 notebook is a no-frills workhorse of a notebook. I've really enjoyed using it over the past several weeks. The size is perfect and the flexible covers make it comfortable to carry and handle. While it's not a great choice for writing in environments where you don't have a hard surface to work on, it's an excellent choice for notes and journaling as long as you have a desk or table to work from. The silky smooth paper is enjoyable and the unique Kokuyo dots/lines paper layout is useful. At $3.30 a notebook, they're a great option for stocking up on this handy size notebook.

(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)

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The Sketchnote Ideabook: A Review

(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

The Sketchnote Ideabook is made by AirshipNotebooks.com for Mike Rohde, who wrote two books (The Sketchnote Handbook and The Sketchnote Workbook) on how to take notes using the Sketchnote method.

The notebook is A5 size (5.8" x 8.3") with a polyurethane hardcover in gray. The cover is soft to the touch and adorned with icons, Sketchnote and Airship branding, and the "Ideas Not Art" logo.

It has a band closure in teal, two book ribbons (one teal, one orange), and a back cover pocket.

The 160 gsm blank paper (128 pages) is almost as thick as card stock. The pages are sewn with a lay-flat binding and the corners are rounded. The last four pages are perforated. The first two have large boxes for icon drawing reference, the third has small boxes, and the last is blank to use as a blotter. I forgot to take pictures of these pages, but you can see them on the Ideabook website.

The front and back end pages contain a brief introduction to the Sketchnote method, including the five basic elements of drawing and Sketchnoting patterns. Having easy access to these instructions is helpful.

The design of the "This Book Belongs To" page isn't appealing, with the "Reward for Return" (as if) and the drawing of Mike Rohde. Sorry, Mike. I'm sure you're a great guy, but I don't really want your likeness in my notebook.

Although the paper is thick and smooth, it's not meant for fountain pens. In my tests with eleven pens and inks, I found that, although the ink didn't bleed through much, it did feather.

Ink swabbing also demonstrated that this paper isn't meant for fountain pens. The colors of the eight inks I tested are crisp, but the paper absorbs the ink and doesn't exhibit any sheen or shading. Plus, the inks bled through slightly, and the paper puckers. Although the Ideabook website says, "You'll love this paper," I don't love it--not for fountain pens, anyway.

I tested a variety of non-fountain pens. The paper handled them well, with the exception of the Sharpie Magnum, but no one expects mega-Sharpies not to bleed. The fine point Sharpie didn't bleed through at all.

I used my Lamy 2000 (fine nib) inked with Iroshizuku Kiri-Same to try my hand at Sketchnoting. First, I practiced the five basic elements of drawing.

Then I watched a YouTube video by DAS Bookbinding on how to case bind a hand-sewn book. For the first two-page spread, I used the Radial Notetaking method. My pages turned out pretty messy, and I had to stop the video several times to write down the details I wanted. The Sketchnote method didn't hinder me. Rather, the instructions in the video were given too quickly for me to keep up. During lulls in the video, I added little pictures of the tools required and utilized some of the recommended drawing methods.

I varied my note taking methods during the course of the video. On my third page, I used the Vertical Notes method.

For the fourth page I used the Path Notetaking method.

I've always been a visual notetaker. I doodled in the margins while taking notes in school, but I never thought to incorporate doodles into the note taking itself. The Sketchnote method combines note taking with simple drawings to create a visual result. This is especially helpful when you're trying to retain information because drawing and writing create pathways to your brain.

I am, however, very much tied to words, and the Sketchnote method emphasizes writing only the main points, not all the details. I can't take notes that way. I need the details, such as the measuring formulas given in the video I watched. With practice I think I could let go of writing full sentences and focus more on using key words and drawings. I'm going to continue using my Ideabook while watching bookbinding videos to practice sketchnoting. But I will switch to a ballpoint pen or pencil instead of a fountain pen.

You can purchase the Sketchnote Ideabook at Airship Notebooks for $24.00 plus shipping.

(Airship Notebooks provided this notebook free of charge for Pen Addict to review. This post also contains Amazon affiliate links.)

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Enjoy reading The Pen Addict? Then consider becoming a member to receive additional weekly content, giveaways, and discounts in The Pen Addict shop. Plus, you support me and the site directly, for which I am very grateful.

Membership starts at just $5/month, with a discounted annual option available. To find out more about membership click here and join us!